Museo de Arte latino-americano Fundacion Costantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Program: permanent and temporary exhibition spaces for modern and contemporary art museum, facilities and administration offices
Size: 10,000 sqm
Status: competition, 1997

The site for the new museum sits next to a garden originally designed by Burle Marx that is today very disrupted.
The most interesting approach to the project was to restore the garden to Burle-Marx’s original design, integrating it with the museum. Because this required a certain relationship in scale between the new volumes and Burle Marx’s “snail”, the proposed building is a sum of volumes related to internal functions.
The Museum is thus conceived as a playful tool for appreciating the arts, reflecting the playful spirit of Burle-Marx’s project.
The entry courtyard, entrance lobby and circulation mall are gathered, in sequence, by a volume in the form of a wrench, while a terrace volume overlooking Burle Marx’s garden houses facilities like the cafeteria and bookshop.
Inserted between the terraced volume and the exhibition room, the informational facilities, including the video room and an area for speeches to guided-groups, are located on the opposite side of the mall in a triangular-plan, classical step theatre, while the exhibition rooms are located in a massive block volume with a shed roof allowing for southern light.